So, You’ve Just Purchased a Flex 6000

Congratulations! Welcome to the Flex SDR community. There
are a lot of great folks here, and many opportunities to “rediscover ham radio”
using your 6000-series.

A few words of advice, if I may.

You have not purchased a radio. The Flex 6000
Series is a radio SERVER. It is a very high-powered, network-grade
computer server. That it provides radio services is almost incidental. Before
you get truly comfortable with your new “rig,” you will need to have this
epiphany.

This means your shack computer is a client,
running client software (Smart SDR). To be effective, your system must be
support the client. This means hardware and software. Flex is really clear
about the requirements. You must use a supported version of Windows for SSDR,
with a computer of appropriate horsepower. It may be time to update more than
just the rig. As with all servers, multiple clients can connect. Like DAX, CAT, Maestro, etc.

Learn how to set an IP reservation in your
router. Understand how traffic is routed in your LAN. Make friends with MAC
addressing, firewall rules, port mapping, and – most of all – Wi-Fi network
configuration and management.

The 6000 series is very flexible, but not
infinitely so. The difference between having one SCU (Spectral Capture Unit, or
a fancy name for “the radio inside”) like the 6300 and 6500, and two (6700) is
a big deal. With one, you have one receive antenna port active at a time. With two, you
have two. Within those SCUs, you are able to create multiple panadapters (band
displays) and slices ("channels"), in numbers dependent on the hardware. Buy what’s
right for you. Take a long, hard look at the specifications, features, and
requirements before you spend your money.

The best and worst part of Flex radios is the waterfall/panadapter.
Best, in that it changes the way you interact with the bands in a profound way.
Worst, in that you will see – and almost certainly get anxious about – noise sources,
birdies, and just overall radio junk you never knew existed before. It was
always there, trust me. Now it’s in your face.

There are a LOT of permutations you can work
through using the various settings in SSDR. Take the time to explore and see
what they do. This is a process. The 6000-series is a very
complicated machine and takes time to master.

It is likely that you will encounter RF-related
troubles, either to your transmitted signal, received signals, or to your
computer. Integrating a radio server with your station is not the same as
hooking up a conventional radio. You’ve invested in a high-performance rig,
ensure the rest of your station is very well grounded and shielded. All of your
cables should be of top quality.

There is an excellent manual. One of the best I’ve
seen. Before you even take delivery of the rig, read the manual completely. I
know most of us are men, and worse, all of us are ham radio operators. That
doesn’t mean we can’t read the directions.

If exploring on your own and reading the manual
doesn’t help, search the Community. Use the search tools! Simple searches like “WNB”
will lead you to probably thousands of results and quick frustration. Going to
a library and asking for a “book on radio” will get you directed to a long
bookshelf that will take all day to scan. Asking for “The Radio Amateur’s
Handbook, 2016 edition” will get you going much more quickly.

I’ve had my 6500 for
three years, now. It has been on the air almost every day, and has inspired me
to try a lot of new things in my 40-year ham career. I’m not an alpha or beta
tester (although wouldn’t mind being one!), and am not employed by Flex in any
way. The comments above are my opinions only, and do not necessarily reflect
those of Flex or anyone else.

George, I follow your posts diligently and have benefited from them. This post sets the stage for any HAM starting with an SDR and specifically the FLEX. So many other items enter into understanding the FLEX installation and use. The biggest shortfall is the lack of reading the manual to learn the radio. The second is knowing the network that you have and its limitations.
Stan
N1THL

The Flex 6300 has caused me to rebuild my network, not because it had issues but because I wanted it to work remotely now, not down the road.

I'm in the middle of redesigning how everything is hooked up, I converted my Netgear R7000 back to a router (I had it configured as an AP because of the Comcast WiFi Modem). Turned on its VPN, configured OpenVPN, heck, the 6300 forced me to finally do what I wanted to do with the network 3 years ago!

I bought my own Motorola modem, bought a new 16 port switch I mounted on a 2x4, new cables and I'm deciding where my monster desktop is going to reside because next to the radios isn't going to do.

I also have to make room for the Maestro, as for the manual, yep, skipped right on by but I'm going to be reading that as well.

George? What's up buddy? After 3 yrs? I was thinking a song was coming, you know, picture Julie Andrews singing, "The hills are alive with the sound of <crackling RF>. For those too young, Julie Andrews was the nanny in The Sound of Music, 51 yrs ago. GM, I hope you accept that in the good nature it was given!

It seems there really are two cohorts on this forum, the first and most obvious, those of us OT that likely watched SoM in the theaters vs the young bunnies that maybe read about it or heard about it from parents, or had to Google the reference. And, those that preordered their flex 4 years ago, perhaps having owned a 1, 3, or 5, at any rate having gone through the last 3 year of its evolving, and those that are recent purchasers. This likely represents a highly correlated factor in what Bill was referring to yesterday.

It is possible that I saw it in the theatre when I was 6 years old, but I don't remember it. I DID see it the first time it was on broadcast TV several years later because my mom took over the TV that evening. (Yes, back then we only had ONE TV and it only had 4 channels. And the "Remote Control" consisted of mom and dad saying "go change the channel!")

Memories...memories.....I have fond memories of my Globe Scout 65 and Allied Radio A-2516 (made by Trio). But I wouldn't want to go back to the days of ten-minute band changes that required tuning multiple stages of the transmitter, tuning the manual pre-selector on my receiver, and manual TR Antenna switching....

I am really hooked on the big panadapter and unmatched receiver filtering!

#5 struck home for me. At first the waterfall provided an excellent method of visualizing local noise sources and knocking them out. I was able to knock out a few things I had just gotten used to hearing in my old rig. Then, of course it got to the point where i was trying to hunt down noise sources on the waterfall that I couldn't hear in the headphones. That got to be a bit of an obsession for a while.

To me, the waterfall is the absolute best feature of the Flex. I don't think it is about knobs vs. mice, analog vs. digital, hardware vs. software. I think it's all about hearing vs. seeing and hearing. Seeing the band spread out before you gives a sense of control not found within a 250 Hz CW filter. Seeing a DX pileup +1 KHz above a weak DX signal - priceless.

YES!I would like to add that the way SmartSDR treats the panadapter and waterfall make it a pleasure to use. If you try "other" SDR applications you will see the differences. Starting with the QUALITY of the waterfall to the ability to move and have both Panadapter and Waterfall follow you.

11) With SSDR, Raw CPU power may not be as important as the abilities of your Video Graphics Card. If you have a killer CPU and a sub-standard Video Graphics card, you will experience frustration. Make sure your Video Graphics Card has a passmark rating as high as you can reasonably justify for your system. At least 400 is preferable if you plan to do multiple pans/slices with high update rates. Even higher is better.

12) while you wait for delivery, of shortly thereafter, read the articles in the Flex Community, the Knowledge Base, and YouTube videos about proper Transmitter Gain, EQ, Bandwidth, Processor, and Downward Expander settings for the various purposes - Rag Chewing, DXing, Contesting, Weak Signal, etc. and learn how to properly adjust your audio. You will be glad you put the time and effort into it! A well adjusted audio passband can sometimes be more effective than adding an amplifier when it comes to weak signal work.

13) Become well versed in the best practices of adjusting receiver enhancements, such as filter bandwidth, AGC-T, AGC Speed, WNB, NB, NR, APF, ANF, RX EQ, and TNF. Learn when to use each feature and how to adjust them properly... Beginning with AGC-T. Many of these controls interact with each other. for example, a change in CW bandwidth or NR may require tweaking the AGC-T level. Once you learn how to make these functions work for you, the 6000 receiver is an amazing receiver.

14) Make room in your future budget for multiple video monitors. Once you become addicted to the panadapter display and begin using your new rig with logging programs, contesting programs, digital communications programs, and more, you will run out of real estate very quickly. Even though a single monitor can have wonderful performance, once you have run a 6000 with two or more monitors, you will not willingly go back to a single screen.